1983 American History Dbq

From 1880 to 1890 farmers had to endure many hardships. For example, food prices were decreasing, which meant farmers had to produce more crops and borrow more money from the banks. The banks then charged high interest rates for loans to farmers. In addition, rail road shipping rates were increasing, farm machinery was every expensive, the farmer's were isolated from the rest of the country, and they felt that they had an unresponsive government. The farmers believed that the deflating currency and the government's failure to regulate the banks and railroad companies were the two main sources for their problems.

Food prices were at incredibly low prices when the 1880's began. This led to farmers having to grow more crops, but as "Causes of Agricultural Unrest" shows, this only helped to further decrease food prices. Unfortunately, the farmers could not just produce less and wait for prices to increase because they didn't have the time to wait for prices to increase. The farmers believed that deflation was the cause of the food prices dropping. According to the "United Sates government data," the farmer's had a very valid point. Between 1865 and 1895 the population of the United States almost doubled, while the money in circulation in 1880 was even less than in 1865. The farmers solution to the deflation was an increase in cheap money, which is also known as silver coinage. However, the Republican party had conservative ideas and wanted to keep the gold standard. So the farmers created the radical, agrarian party known as the Populist party. As shown in "The platform of the People's party," the Populists believed in increasing silver to help the farmers. And although the Populists lost the election. no one remembers the "Acceptance speech of William McKinley." The American people remember W.J. Bryan's Cross of Gold speech and his ideas of silver coinage.

As the number of crops farmers had to produce increased, so did the amount of money the farmers had to...

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...white people. This could be due to the increasing population of African slaves in the South. By 1760, the number of Africans in the English mainland colonies had approximately a quarter of a million, and the vast majority of them lived in the south (Text page 59.) The African Americans were outnumbering whites in some areas. They feared that without slaves, it would be necessary to recruit a servile white workforce in the South, and that the resulting inequalities would jeopardize the survival of liberty. One of the ironies of the American Revolution was that many white Americans were fighting both to secure freedom for themselves and to preserve slavery for others (Text page 117.)
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...Covey, after being mistreated for far too long.19 It also allows him to eventually save up money and run away from the life of slavery.20Intellectual resistance ultimately enables him to write a narrative of his life and experiences as a slave to be published and read by many.
All of these resistances are effective and meaningful to some extent, some more so than the others. The intellectual resistance of learning to read and write, and then later putting these skills to use, is the most meaningful and effective because it was the catalyst to Douglass’ desire to be free.
Bibliography
1. Douglass, Frederick, ‘Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written by Himself’, in David W. Blight, ed., Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written by Himself with related documents, 2nd ed., New York, 2003.
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...1. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century American farmers:
*a. Suffered from the collapse of cotton and wheat prices
b. Benefited from agricultural production in Russia, Canada, and Australia
c. Were delighted about the "short haul," "long-haul" policies of railroads
d. Benefited from the "rebate" practices of railroads
e. Saw a sharp decrease in farm tenancy
2. The Grange:
a. Avoided all social and educational activities and focused their efforts on political
action
b. Was founded by opponents of the Patrons of Husbandry
c. Had its main objective thwarted by the Supreme Court in Munn vs. Illinois
*d. Secured the passage of legislation regulating railroad rates and storage fees
e. Was located primarily in the New England states
3. The Farmer's Alliance of the late nineteenth century was most similar to the Grange in its:
a. Insisting on racial integration in its meetings
b. Opposition to the Populist Party
*c. Decision to encourage cooperatively owned stores
d. Location in the south and the west
e. Securing the support of the American Federation of Labor
4. The Populist Party called for each of the following EXCEPT:
a. Nationalization of Railroads
b. A graduated income tax
*c. Women's suffrage
d. Free and unlimited coinage of silver
e. A Subtreasury system...

...Farmers everywhere in the United States during the late nineteenth century had valid reasons to complaint against the economy because the farmers were constantly being taken advantage of by the railroad companies and banks. All farmers faced similar problems and for one thing, farmers were starting to become a minority within the American society. In the late nineteenth century, industrialization was in the spotlight creating big businesses and capitals. The success of industrialization put agriculture and farmers on the down low, allowing the corporations to overtake the farmers. Since the government itself; such as the Republican Party was also pro-business during this time, they could have cared less about the farmers.
Knowing the fact that industrialization had been really successful during this time, allowed farmers to modernize their techniques. Farmers began to use new farming machinery such as the thresher and reaper, which made the growing of wheat much faster and efficient. However since these tools were too expensive to buy, farmers went to the banks to borrow money. Banks in turn would take advantage of the naïve farmers and raise the interest rates. This would cause the farmers to fall into debt because they would still take the loan from the bank and thought that they would be able to pay them back from their crop profit. Farmers were suffering losses year after year and were forced to have their mortgages foreclosed on, as they saw it, by...